Tech —

The Omni Group hints about their next Mac application

Hints and a blurry image tease those waiting for the Next Great OmniThing.

It is arguable that among Mac enthusiasts the most popular software developer after Apple Computer is The Omni Group. Sure, Microsoft and Adobe are more vital to the Mac platform, but part of what makes the Mac platform vital are applications like OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniWeb. The OmniGroup thinks differently—but not in an elitist, collectible-poster sort of way. For OmniFans, their software is not what you might expect, until you use it, and then you can't imagine it being any other way.

That is why news from out of the OmniMouth that "Omni has a Brand New Secret Product in the works" is cause for excitement. Of course, being Omni, there aren't details, but hints and a contest. Guess what the product is and you can get a beta copy. The hints are:

Some of you have asked for this product. Repeatedly.

The annoyingly blurred image of the product's application icon.

It is NOT a replacement for Mail. Or a word processor.

Some of the guesses include: a project management application, a financial management application, a PIM, a spreadsheet, and an address book (OmniBook). Conveniently, there is also a thread in the Macintoshian Achaia on the subject, and in it gregomni does a little talking:

The biggest thing that has happened as far as competition
goes is, obviously, Safari. OmniWeb used to be the app that kept us in
business, and now it is a distant third. Having lived through that, I
think we are very shy about hitting an application area where Apple is
including something with the OS. Our apps take a lot of work and
polish, and there just isn't enough residual unhappiness out there to
make something like OmniMail or OmniPages or whatever worthwhile.

That having been said, there is existing direct competition on OS X for
the app that I'm working on. But it isn't from Apple itself, and the
users don't seem to be - in general - all that satisfied with the
existing alternatives. So we'll see.